I’m a Windows guy since forever and I recently got into selfhosting. So far its a blast! Are posts about that welcome here?
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Yes, masochists are welcome.
Yup, there’s no kinkshaming here
Sure, if that’s what you want to do. Though, you’ll probably find less references and expertise here. There is a reason that even Microsoft runs Linux on most of its own servers.
Tell us what you are hosting! Tell us now! Lol
Tell us what you are hosting! Tell us now! Lol
IKR! You can’t just tease us OP.
I wouldn’t recommend it personally
Are you hosting on win server? I’m genuinely curious, not trying to shill Linux though I prefer it on the server side, believe me I’ve been on the receiving end of that for desktop Linux. How do you manage it? Do you have your home LAN set up as an active directory domain? Do you use mostly Powershell or the GUI? What do you have running on it? It just seems like everything on the server side assumes you’re using Linux and the only stuff that runs on Win server is stuff made by Microsoft like MS SQL server or IIS.
I would recommend at most ruining windows as the hypervisor then running Linux virtual machines. Maybe run a windows VM if you have a specific need.
This is mainly because Linux is much better “supported” for the majority of self hosted projects.
But you can of course do whatever you want.
I also recommend ruining windows
Well, if masochism is your kink…
Being a former pure windows guy it’s more like battered wife syndrome.
Its an abusive relationship but its all you know and hard to leave.
I’m on bazzite now with a Debian homelab on a SFF.
Still really new to Linux but I’m trying.
Good for you. If the way Windows behaves now doesn’t drive people to Linux, they’ll never jump. They’ll just keep taking the abuse because they like it.
I don’t understand starting out on Linux in an immutable distro, but maybe that’s the oldhead in me, I’ve been on Linux since the 90s. I find adding software in those distros to be a massive pain in the ass, as well as dealing with its constraints on configurability. But if it’s working for you, fill your boots. Welcome to the dark side.
That’s just silly.
Self hosting is all about Digital Autonomy; that’s just not possible with a windows OS.
Apart from that it would just make your life harder, as the vast majority of documentation and tutorials and helper scripts are based on some linux like OS.
I don’t think that Linux is in the title or description of this community!
You pick your own poison …
Mine is Gentoo Linux all the way, yours is Windows. Find two more selfhosters and they will criticize both of us! We are kind of the two extreme of the spectrum…
Welcome!
So true! I met a friend of a friend at a church social last week and he spent the whole time trying to convince me to try FreeBSD instead of selfhosting on Windows. I might try it someday but as polite as he was about it he just couldn’t get the hint lol
Most self-hosted solutions come as containers, containers are Linux only and on Windows they run under the WSL VM, so eventually (if you are not doing full installs) you are still using Linux
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I’ve seen in this thread:
Fewer Letters More Letters DHCP Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol, automates assignment of IPs when connecting to a network ESXi VMWare virtual machine hypervisor NAS Network-Attached Storage Plex Brand of media server package SSD Solid State Drive mass storage SSH Secure Shell for remote terminal access
6 acronyms in this thread; the most compressed thread commented on today has 3 acronyms.
[Thread #12 for this comm, first seen 14th Jun 2026, 12:30] [FAQ] [Full list] [Contact] [Source code]
One step at a time, you will eventually move to GNU/Linux in the future if this new hobby persist. But there is nothing wrong with beginning using software and tools you are already familiar with. However you will probably have to use WSL (Linux inside Windows basically) to make things work and all guides you will find will mostly be based on Docker and/or Linux. So you will definitely use Linux on your Microslop owned machine.
If you don’t have the time to learn a new OS it’s fine, but it will not necessarly make things easier, especially on the long run. That’s my take on it.
My very first self-hosting homelab was a Linux Mint old refurbished desktop PC that I was remotely accessing through AnyDesk (I was a Windows kid user at that time). Now I’m on NixOS through SSH and still learning, I do not completely comfortable but I am able to use it and learn while doing so.
I would highly encourage you to try to run a lightweight beginer friendly Linux distro such as debian, Linux Mint XFCE or Kubuntu if you feel like you need a desktop environement and graphic user interfaces but if you really want to use that Microslop license you bought it’s fine, you will probably switch in the following months or years. Okay maybe not, some people are fine using it.
You can also take a look at stuff like runtipi, yunohost, CasaOS, ZimaOS, Umbrel, Cloudron and stuff like that. They aim to be beginner friendly self-hosting “OS” or “WebUI”.
Sure, but know you’re doing things the hard way. I started with Win 10, WSL, and Docker Desktop but moving to Linux made things 10x easier, Windows is… difficult.
Many of us started running Windows Server and endpoints, but in my case, the cost and substandard tools turned me away. I was running A DLNA server and using WDS (yes, very overkill for home, but fun to learn for work), but then I found TrueNAS (then called FreeNAS) running on BSD. I now run a simple share from there and Kodi on my (Linux and Android) user endpoints. I don’t bother with imaging anymore, and use
ddfor backups to my NAS. My Firewall runs OPNSense (BSD) and I run OpenWRT on two TrendNet WAPs.I’ll never go back to MS. It’s just not a welcoming platform from my perspective. Don’t even get me started on .NET or the various and sundry “redistributables” constantly required by every tool you try to use.
Don’t even get me started on .NET or the various and sundry “redistributables” constantly required by every tool you try to use.
It’s absurd but Linux is far worse. Instead of addressing library bloat and versioning we have Docker which just throws EVERYTHING into a bag and makes you download an entire OS environment space to run one app.
And that is perfect. Instead of setting up one VM for each service and manually updating all dependencies, I’d much rather use that very handy bag with everything in it.
But the op is complaining about the much lighter .net where the shared libraries for all apps are a fraction of the space of bringing in an entire OS environment for each and every app.
You complained about docker putting everything into a bag and I tried to argue that this approach was better because there is no need to consider library versions conflicting between apps.
